1. Field of the Invention
In general, the present invention relates to systems and methods that are used to track the health and wellbeing of people within a targeted group. More particularly, the present invention relates to systems and methods that utilize interactive software to both promote and track physical activity among participants in the targeted group.
2. Description of the Background
It is a well-established fact that people generally live longer, healthier lives if they get regular physical activity. It is also a well-established fact that people are more likely to start and continue a lifestyle of physical activity if they have peers and friends that are also participating in that exercise program. Recognizing the above stated facts, many companies have developed employee exercise programs. The hope is that these programs would lead to healthier employees and healthier employees would use less sick days and have lower healthcare costs. By offering exercise programs at work, it is hoped that employees would exercise with peers and would benefit from the support of peers.
Difficulties develop, however, when the management of a company tries to develop exercise programs for their employees. The problem is that many people are not yet behaviorally ready to “exercise” and that not all of those who are enjoy the same types of exercise. As such, a company gym may only appeal to some employees, while a company softball team may appeal to others. Recognizing that different people like different things, exercise programs have been developed that are highly flexible to fit the varied needs and wants of a company's employees. In such exercise programs, the management of a company does not concern itself with what physical activity is being performed. Rather, the company just monitors whether physical activity is being performed and often offers incentives to employees to start and maintain physical activity as part of their daily routines.
The most common way that companies monitor whether or not an employee is performing exercise is to provide the employees with interactive computer software. Using the software, an employee can enter what exercise has been performed. This information is then stored in a database for access by the company. Such exercise monitoring software systems are exemplified by U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2006/0287883 to Turgis, entitled Interactive Internet Supported Health And Fitness Management System; U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2007/0072154 to Kaufman, entitled Lifesytle Coach Behavior Modification System; and U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2007/0100595 to Earles, entitled Behavior Monitoring And Reinforcement System and Method.
The problem associated with such prior art exercise monitoring software systems is that the systems require that an individual manually input data into a computer to inform the computer of what exercise has been performed. Since many of these systems provide rewards for exercise, there is a good incentive for people to lie about exercising or exaggerate in order to receive the reward. Furthermore, people quickly grow tired of tasks in which they are not interested. Employees that must voluntarily enter and log their daily exercise routines may quickly develop user fatigue. Employees may forget to enter data daily and when they do enter data, that data may contain guesses and inaccurate remembrances of days past.
Alternatively, some companies use activity tracking technology that “docks” to a computer to offload the activity data. The problem associated with this type of connection is that it often is inconvenient or cumbersome for the individual to gain access to the computer and as such the participation levels drop off quickly.
Another problem associated with such prior art exercise systems is that it is difficult for an employee to equate different exercises with one another. For example, how may miles of kayaking equate to how many hours of playing tennis? This difficultly in equating exercises makes it very difficult to establish goals for rewards. It also makes it very difficult to set up challenges and competitions among participants that would promote further exercise.
The notion of challenges and competitions is well established, wherein individuals can compete with each other or create teams that compete against one another. However, when working with an organization that has thousands of employees and hundreds of different groups, it has historically been very difficult for an administrator to easily turn those groups into competitive fitness teams, and/or to create challenges between and among such groups and/or teams. This has significantly limited the ability of organizations to leverage the natural social support network of departments, internal work groups, project colleagues, and/or geographic locations into a healthier organizational culture.
A need therefore exists for an exercise system that both passively and accurately monitors the amount of exercise performed by an individual, thereby reducing cheating and user fatigue. A need also exists for an exercise system where all exercises are automatically reduced to comparable units, thereby enabling all exercises to be compared for use in challenges and competitions. A need also exists for an exercise system whereby data collected automatically and passively offloads to a central database, thereby eliminating the need for active intervention by the individual to participate in the program. Finally, a need also exists to allow an administrator to easily set up challenges and competitions between varying sizes and numbers of groups. These needs are met by the present invention as described and claimed below.